Mitch McConnell eyes GOP takeover, health care reform repeal

It’s a long, hard slog between here and the majority for Senate Republicans. So Democrats were taken aback when Minority Leader Mitch McConnell took to the floor this week and declared how he’d run the place if he were in charge.

McConnell, the most calculating Republican operator in the Senate, may have said his No. 1 goal is to defeat President Barack Obama in 2012. But becoming majority leader is at least a close second.

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Not only is McConnell thinking about winning in 2012 with a message focused largely on health care, he’s also starting to chart a course for a Republican Senate in 2013 and what could be a bruising reelection bid in 2014.

It all points to a shrewd Republican leader trying to strengthen his hold on his conference while going to lengths to bolster the GOP’s shaky standing in the polls ahead of a historic election.

“We are certainly not measuring the drapes, and we don’t know what the outcome is going to be in the fall,” McConnell told POLITICO in an interview. “But I think that there are many people who want to know what changing the majority will mean.”

After weeks of Republican-on-Republican feuding over the payroll tax fight and how the GOP should promote its agenda, McConnell is taking steps to try to soothe the internal divisions.

For the campaign season, McConnell has appointed Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) to develop a joint agenda with House Republicans and the eventual GOP presidential nominee — a move aimed at both tamping down internal dissension and creating a stark contrast with Democrats. McConnell is beginning to speak one by one with GOP senators to secure enough commitments to ensure he remains Republican leader in 2013-14, according to senators.

Planning for a GOP takeover, McConnell and other top Republicans have begun shaping an early legislative agenda for 2013 aimed initially at repealing Obama’s health care law. Texas Sen. John Cornyn, who wants to be the No. 2 Senate Republican, said the “most obvious way” to kill the law would be to wait until there’s a GOP Senate and push repeal via a 51-vote, simple majority through the budget reconciliation process.

With the economy showing signs of life and the prospect of gas prices coming back to earth, McConnell signaled it may make more sense to focus on health care as a campaign tactic.

“It’s the one issue that you can absolutely predict will be there this fall,” McConnell said in the interview. “People talk about gas prices, we don’t know whether they’ll be high in the fall. People talk about what’s the economy going to be like in the fall?”

To protect his own standing in 2014, McConnell is methodically laying the groundwork for a presidential-style campaign for a sixth term. He’s intent on fending off a primary challenge from the right as well as any effort by Democrats to make him a high-profile takeout target.

The wily GOP leader and his top aides are studying the voter identification tactics of the primary campaigns of all the GOP presidential contenders. And the McConnell team has set a goal this year of doubling the fundraising haul of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in the year before his hard-fought 2010 victory. They’re on pace to do just that, with $4.25 million in the bank as of Dec. 31.

To do that, McConnell will have to satisfy tea party activists back home in case any are looking at a potential primary challenge.

I don't understand how any Republican health care plan makes health care services better for the majority of Americans, so, therefore, I don't understand why a majority of Americans would vote for Republicans on the health care issue.

HEY McConnell. PREPARE FOR TRENCH WARFARE IF YOU BECOME MAJORITY LEADER. YOU THINK THE DEMOCRATS will just lie down and let you roll over them?. They can practice the same obstructionism you've done for the past 3 years. Democrats can filibuster just as well as Republicans. What goes around, comes around.

I don't understand how any Republican health care plan makes health care services better for the majority of Americans, so, therefore, I don't understand why a majority of Americans would vote for Republicans on the health care issue.

Simple. Most Americans are morons, idiots. If they were chickens, they'd vote for Colonel Sanders. They can't wait to vote in Republicans so 2 1/2 million kids will be thrown off their parent's health insurance and pre-existing conditions will once again cause millions to not be able to get access to health insurance. AFTER A LIFETIME OF OBSERVING MY FELLOW CITIZENS, I CAN SAFELY SAY......MOST AMERICANS ARE MORONS!

If the Republicans retain the House and gain the Whitehouse and Senate-Goddess forbid-we'd become a modern fuedal society. A hard scrabble existence for most with a fabulous existence for the wealthy and powerful.

There wasn't ANYTHING more important to report on than this hack fantasizing about something his Moron-American presidential candidates have made impossible ? Like a generic khardashian blabbering about being the majority leader of their home owners association ?

If the Republicans retain the House and gain the Whitehouse and Senate-Goddess forbid-we'd become a modern fuedal society. A hard scrabble existence for most with a fabulous existence for the wealthy and powerful.

You got it. The rich will get richer, the rest of us will suck eggs and die in their wars they get us into. Welcome to America 2013. It will be dog eat dog and everyone will be packing heat because the NRA and the Teabaggers will be giving Romney his marching orders. America is finished..

OLD senile TURTLE HEAD MITCH always either looks like he is on heavy medication, or in a trance and at all other times like a deer in the headlights of a semi truck heading right at him , or also like a guilty kid who got caught again with his hand in the cookie jar or more likely,, the cash register! LOL

The vitriol and HATE these rightwing jihadist spew and sabotage everything anybody tries to thats GOOD for the people. Is exactly why this country needs to throw these HATE merchants OUT in November.

Notice they don't have, a solution to heathcare costs that were killing businesses by quadrupling in price every 2 years. Which is WHY we developed the Healthcare reform bill!

All they got is HATE and childish temper tantrums, because WE THE PEOPLE didn't let them get their way. There way meaning the killing of 144,000 Americans EVERY YEAR because they can't afford skyrocketing INSURANCE!!!!

They spent 3 yrs hating and pouting and came up with NOTHING about solving the underlying problem.

McConnell still stands for the deadbeat nation -- people who don't pay for their health care and oil companies that take tax-payer subsidies while gouging us at the pump. And he expects a super-majority in the senate and a republican president. Good luck with that.

McConnell never met a lobbyist with a big check book that he didn't love. Mitch is more out of place with the modern world than an AM Transistor Radio in an Apple Store. This guy's office probably looks like the Progressive soup commerical on TV with all the cans hanging from strings as a communication system.

As the only Republican Congressman at a rally for the Equal Rights Amendment on Thursday, Rep. Richard Hanna (R-N.Y.) gave women an unexpected piece of advice: Give your money to Democrats.

"I think these are very precarious times for women, it seems. So many of your rights are under assault," he told the crowd of mostly women. "I'll tell you this: Contribute your money to people who speak out on your behalf, because the other side -- my side -- has a lot of it. And you need to send your own message. You need to remind people that you vote, you matter, and that they can't succeed without your help."

The Equal Rights Amendment, which Congress passed in 1972 but has not yet been ratified by the necessary 38 states, simply says that equality under the law "shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of sex." Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) reintroduced the legislation this year in hopes that it would finally become a part of the Constitution.

"If equality had been enshrined in the Constitution for these past 40 years, I wonder if we would still be hearing today from right-wing presidential contenders that women should not serve in combat, that women should think twice before they seek to work outside of the house, that women should not use birth control, and that women who do are called names that are not fit to repeat here," Maloney said at the rally.

Hanna, a pro-choice Republican and co-sponsor of the Equal Rights Amendment, acknowledged that women's continuing fight for equality is meeting some resistance among his Republican colleagues. He urged women to become more politically active on their own behalf.

"This is a dogfight, it's a fistfight, and you have all the cards," he said. "I can only tell you to get out there and use them. Tell the other women, the other 51 percent of the population, to kick in a few of their bucks. Make it matter, get out there, get on TV, advertise, talk about this. The fact that you want [the ERA] is evidence that you deserve it and you need it."

When HuffPost asked Hanna after the rally whether he was bucking his party by encouraging women to give their money to "the other side," he said that he wasn't.

"I'm trying to help [the GOP]," he said. "I think it's the appropriate thing to do."